A HDD contains the boot file for my SSD

[TheProphecy]

I've run across this issue, I can't wrap my head around it. I have Windows 7 on a 500GB WD HDD. I decided to upgrade to a SSD, so I bought a SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB a year and a half ago (somewhere around there). I installed Windows on the SSD, no problems. I left the HDD in there because I was just too lazy to take it out. Every time Windows boots, it boots to the dual boot screen where I choose either the SSD or HDD. I recently bought a 4TB HDD for storage and wanted to get rid of the WD HDD with Windows on it.

First I tried to just format the HDD, which is the D drive. Wouldn't let me do it. I deleted the D drive boot sequence in Windows. Next time I booted the computer, it said "BOOTMGR is missing, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart." I got out the Windows disk and tried to see if I could repair the startup that way. When I clicked on the SSD it said it was running a different version of Windows and this disk couldn't do anything. This is insane and not possible. It's the same disk I used to install Windows on both the SSD and HDD.

Next, I went into the cmd prompt using the recovery disk and tried using bootrec commands. It said Windows Installations: 0, so I couldn't select anything to fix/repair. So, in order to use my SSD, I have to keep the HDD in as the primary boot drive, and then select the SSD when the dual boot menu pops up.

If it helps, this is what comes up when I go into disk management:
SSD (C) Healthy (Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
Enterprise (D) Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)

 

[SkyNetRising]

Post screenshot from Disk Management
(upload to tinypic.com or imgur.com and post link).

 

[rgd1101]

Sound like when you install windows 7, you have the hdd attach to the pc and it contain the boot partition

 

[TheProphecy]

http://imgur.com/a/V3SWp

It's worth noting that the SSD was Disk 0 before I tried removing the HDD. Nothing was different. The dual boot menu still came up.

 

[psoohoo]

disconnect the old HDD (or any other than the SSD), boot to the windows installation disk (or system repair disk) and run repair see it it can rebuild the missing system files. You also may want to change the SATA ports to have the SSD on port 0

when you installed Windows, with the other volume still there, it was seen first and Windows puts the SYSTEM files there.
hopefully the repair or bootrec can rebuild them.

 

[TheProphecy]

disconnect the old HDD (or any other than the SSD), boot to the windows installation disk (or system repair disk) and run repair see it it can rebuild the missing system files. You also may want to change the SATA ports to have the SSD on port 0

when you installed Windows, with the other volume still there, it was seen first and Windows puts the SYSTEM files there.
hopefully the repair or bootrec can rebuild them.

I've done this. The SSD will show up in the repair options, but when I click on it I get a message saying it's using a different version of Windows and to use a different disk.

 

[SkyNetRising]

http://imgur.com/a/V3SWp

Ok, here is, how you fix it:
1. Disconnect all your removable drives;
2. Shrink C: by 300MB;
3. Create new primary partition in freed up space;
4. Format the new partition in ntfs format, assign drive letter X: , make partition active;
5. Create bootloader on new partition using bcdboot command (use elevated command prompt):

• bcdboot c:\windows /s x:

6. Shutdown your pc and disconnect HDD;
7. Enter BIOS and change boot sequence, so that SSD is first in boot order;
8. Boot up your computer with only SSD connected.

Done.

 

[TheProphecy]

When I try to shrink the volume, this comes up. "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it."

 

[SkyNetRising]

And how exactly are you doing that shrinking?

 

[TheProphecy]

From disk management.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Have you disabled any services? Like - Optimize Drives Service?
If so, then set startup type to manual for this service.

 

[TheProphecy]

IDK. Where would I go to see if that was turned off?

 

[SkyNetRising]

To windows services:
https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/11299